Chewing the Channel: In conversation with Chaim Grunfeld

In this episode, Will heads to London to sit down with Chaim Grunfeld, Co-Founder of Prime Connect, for a conversation packed with entrepreneurial lessons, leadership insights, and honest business advice.

From travelling solo to Philadelphia at just 14 years old, to building a successful property business before making the leap into telecoms in just three days, Chaim shares the experiences that shaped his approach to business.

In this episode, we discuss:
🔹 Why people are the most important part of any business
🔹 The three pillars every business needs to get right
🔹 Why sales and marketing should always be driving growth
🔹 The power of staying niche rather than trying to serve everyone
🔹 Setting clear boundaries and empowering your team
🔹 Why sometimes the best decision is to say no
🔹 The "Happy Customer Pot" – a simple but powerful idea for building long-term trust

Chaim also reflects on being one of the very first Elevate Wholesale partner to meet with us, offering honest feedback that helped shape our journey from day one.

If you're a business owner, leader, or simply passionate about growth, customer experience, and building a business that lasts, you won't want to miss this one.

Website: www.elevate.uk/wholesale

LinkedIn: Will Goodall

LinkedIn: Teigan Kemp

Phone: 0330 058 9530

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:10

Hi everyone, welcome to Chewing the Channel. He's made me come to London after probably two years of pastoring him to come on the pod. I have uh key figure in the industry, Haim Gunfeld, owner, co-founder, uh co-owner of Prime Connect, Simson Lyfts, landlord uh services. Um I've known him a number of years. Uh I'm really excited for this. This is probably a little bit different to a lot of the episodes we do in terms of we're talking to a pure entrepreneur, someone that's grown a business but done it in a very unique way, in terms of keeping um a lean business model but not sacrificing growth um to do that. So I'm really excited to get into this with him and um yeah, look forward to it. I think the first time I asked you to be a guest on my podcast, I want to say a year and a half ago, possibly something like that, and we've had to travel to London to get you. Um to be fair to you, you were saying off camera you don't really travel outside of Golders Green, so you've had to travel over to a different side of London. Because I I learned this with London to a northerner, it's uh it's one place. Whereas to people living in London, there's certain areas of London where people don't, if you're the north, you perhaps don't like the east or the south or the west, and you can be quite entrenched. So it means a lot you're coming in to to our podcast. Um I've worked with you for a number of years in in the connectivity space, which is a piece where we've we've worked together, and I've always been grateful when we set up um wholesale function at Elevate. You were the first business to to come in and meet us and have a chat through and provide um I wasn't say brutally, but very direct, honest feedback, and I think that would always frame our conversations with you're very, very straight and honest and direct, and um I know I can assume with business you're very fair but very clear, there's no smoke and mirrors. Um and what I was really interested in, because I did a little bit of research on your career. You um I've always been an entrepreneur, and where did that sort of entrepreneurial seed be sown in in your life? Because you could quite easily, with your connections and things like that, be working in a in a Fortune 500 business in a senior role, where instead you've kind of wanted to kind of plow your own furrow. So you know, growing up, what what was kind of were you always going to run your own business?

SPEAKER_00 2:53

Good question. Um, I don't think I thought about it too much. I grew up in a place called Antwerp in Belgium. Um so growing up in a family where probably a lot of the community were Holocaust survivors, my grandparents are Holocaust survivors. So we definitely had the attitude to always excel in what you do. On your question, my entrepreneurial view, um, I can get straight into it. I had the same question as you, and I did ask that question to a mentor of mine. Should I look for a job or should I potentially try something myself? And his answer to me was work for yourself, like this, you're a boss on yourself. Now, that was the answer in 2010. Looking back, I don't think what he really meant was to work for yourself, you know, be an entrepreneur. That's how I took it, luckily. But um, I think what he meant is a person has to be himself, right? A person has to stay in his lane, not get distracted by other people, be focused, and continue where you believe is the right place to go. Um, so just to give you a little bit of background, I grew up in Belgium and Antwerp. I left at a very, very young age, and that probably gave me a lot of lessons. I less I left by the age of 14.

SPEAKER_01 4:24

And did you go to America?

SPEAKER_00 4:26

I went to America, a place called Philadelphia, two hours away from New York, two hours away from Washington. Um, and I was 14 years old. Now, this is 1999. I'm traveling, I guess, without a mobile phone, traveling without a credit card. There's no Ubers, there's no Google Maps. Um, every time I landed, I need to run to the payphone, use the calling card.

SPEAKER_01 4:51

Um you safe, you you kind of stage one of the journey's done, I'm onto the next bit.

SPEAKER_00 4:57

That's that's that the the the other thing which is interesting, there were no direct flights to Philly, which meant that I flew to New York, I flew to Boston, I flew to Washington with a stopover. That made the journey even more complicated. In America, you need to take out your luggage, pass customs, then check in again, drop up the suitcases. But I think that whole journey definitely um taught me how to cope by myself. Um, going back even before I reached America, I was 14 years old, and it wasn't so simple for me to go to America. My parents weren't so happy. My mother, I think, at the time said, What are you gonna do? Take drugs there, like America was like just off limits.

SPEAKER_01 5:33

Um but you knew at 14 that's where I want to go because I I'm thinking, you know, it's a big decision to make at 14. I can I can a hundred percent see why people would be potentially um family at home saying it's a it's like it's not somewhere where you can just jump in a train and come back.

SPEAKER_00 5:57

I came home four times a year, that's it, which is quite a lot. But again, there's things that I learned, right? So I was traveling with quite a lot of cash. There's no credit card, so I paid the boarding school in cash. It taught me how to be responsible, um, how to organize everything. I probably booked my own tickets. I went to Brussels at the time, to the American embassy, to go do my own visa. There was no help. You want to go to America? You sort yourself out. Um, you know, lining up the first time by customs, quite daunting in America. I'll never forget a story there that um I'm standing in line, and there's a guy, there was these long white papers at the time, which he had to fill out um to enter America, and it touched his nose. And the officer from the back says, You there, I'm not taking this from you, go write another one. And that was my welcome to America, you know. This is like serious. But again, you know, I was there for six years, so 14 till the age of 20. Homesick at the start, or nope, I wanted to go. Uh it was me pushing. So again, the first time was for a month, then it was six months, then it was three months, so it was it was quite easy. Um, and yeah, from there I went to Israel for a year. That's from the age of 20 till 21. Got married to go from London, went back to Israel for another set of studies till the age of 24, and in 2010 I came back to England. So that's I guess my personal background. And that's where this question came in. Do you want to work for someone else or do you want to work for yourself? And I took the decision I'm going to work for myself.

SPEAKER_01 7:30

And you because it's it's quite amazing, really, because I don't know many 14-year-olds, if any, are determined to that they know part of their journey is effectively the other side of the world, and particularly those times when you're you're doing interconnecting flights, there's not the form of communication, it's not like you can easily FaceTime people and and and Ubers and things and you're carrying cash and and then obviously going from America to Israel, Israel to London, London to Israel, all that to London. Where did the obviously to settle down, where did that property bit come in in London? Because I'm imagining you too you're talking about what was it 2000 and 2010. 2010. So from uh an economy position, we're either just out just before the crash.

SPEAKER_00 8:17

Just before again, no, you're right, just before the Olympics. Yeah, so after the crash.

SPEAKER_01 8:22

So you've had the crash. You want to become an entrepreneur, or you are already probably an entrepreneur, but you're you're going into a property area where there's been a you know pretty severe crash. I mean, I I f I quite fortunate, I suppose, in my personal sales career, because I was selling internet at the time, it was one of those professions that was relatively insulated in terms of businesses always pretty much need the internet, but it had a big effect on particularly the property sector with values and properties and people overnight going from high net worth individuals to nothing. Um, did you see that as um you know were you kind of moving?

SPEAKER_00 9:03

There's a story of how it happened. So, you know, my business partner, Mr. Chaim Berkowitz. So we call ourselves Chaimer Chaim. Not an easy name to pronounce, but again, we get remembered as part of the marketing. Um we actually studied together in Israel. So we had learned together. Is that where you first met? No, he's from Belgium as well. Did you grow up together? Same school, he's two years younger, so two classes younger. But we we we we um there were some Tammudical studies we did together in Israel in the university, or the yeshiva the way we call it. Um, and we were both moving back together at the same time. And he called me one night with a proposition, that was before I called the mentor, um, saying, My father-in-law, his father-in-law, is in property, happens to be my father-in-law is also in property, and he suggested we open up something together, a partnership. Um, he'll put in some money, my father-in-law put in some money, and we'll get it going. And that's exactly what happened. Um, just to fast forward to when it did happen.

SPEAKER_01 10:04

And is that commercial property or residential is that renting renting property?

SPEAKER_00 10:10

We were going we were not going into commercial, definitely not. We weren't even going into buy to let, we were going into development. So we were going to buying derelict properties in auction, doing them up and selling. That was a business plan. Now, I landed in this country to move back from Israel on the 15th of August 2010. We bought our first property in auction on the 16th of September 2010. That's 31 days later. So that's called speed to market. Um, looking back at it, I'm quite surprised myself. And just to put things in context, it wasn't like today where you can check things online. Uh again, right move was around, but the auction properties weren't listed in Right Move. So you had to order a catalogue from various auction sites, Allsop, Savills, Andrews and Robertson, which doesn't exist anymore, and so on and so on. Um, they used to send you a paper auction catalogue. There was another sheet in there which I printed post them printing the catalogue with all the viewing times, and you had to go view the properties one by one. And that's what we did. There was a property in Chinkfords, we bought a three-bedroom house, and um yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:18

How did you both because you you've worked together for a long time now, and when I look at a lot of successful um businesses, there's normally the two there's normally two, sometimes three, owners who have a slightly different skill set to each other that kind of balances out. So if there's two people that are impulsive, it doesn't really work, whereas there's there's that level of um entrepreneur in terms of great ideas, and then there might be their business partner is you know a fantastic uh the uh financial aspect and the making sure that I the the entrepreneurial ideas kind of pay off, so to speak. Who was doing the decision making in terms of the the properties you were looking at? Have you always found that you two are quite aligned in terms of this is the right area, this is what we're looking for?

SPEAKER_00 12:10

So I think the answer on that question is neither of us made that decision. That was Haim's father who made the decision. So we didn't ever say at that moment, just to double click on you know that first purchase, because that was a if looking back now was a crazy moment for us. It was a crazy moment for 31 days. Just I I'll I'll just explain what happened. Um, so I didn't know anything about property, about auction. There was nothing online either. The only thing you could see a little bit of homes under the hammer for a few seconds on you know how the auction room looks, how it feels. Now I read a book in the book it said, um, and that's what I do with anything I need to know. I research. Um in the book it said that the auctioneer is going to go in the room with certain segments, so 150, 160, 170, and your brief, he says, is to break the rhythm of the auctioneer, and that's how you're gonna get a good deal. Okay, so now fast forward auction day. We're going down to Marble Arch in I think the Cumberland Hotel in the basement. I remember like today, and this is a room, you're talking about five, six hundred people sitting there in a dark room with an auctioneer. I believe his name was Gary Murphy from All Subs auction, and he's standing there, and this property that we were bidding on was guided between 160 and 190. Okay, so the top number is gonna be 190 not necessarily because the auctioneer can maneuver that with something called bidding off the wall, but again, so he's going 160, 170, 180, 190, 200, and he's looking around. Do I have 200 somewhere? Do I have 200? And comes myself, and I pick up my finger and I say 201,000. And he turns around, where did that bid just come from? And I said again, 201,000 pounds. And he says 201 going once, going twice, going three times, and that was it. And I bought with one bid, I bought that property. Two minutes later, someone comes over, takes me to the back. I don't think they checked ID at that time. There was no AML, but I did get from Chaim's father in law at the time a check, a blank check, pre-signed. He had no he had he didn't think that we're gonna buy a property in auction, definitely not the first time, the first day, but we did. And so the way it works is you need to put down 10%, that's £21,000, and then completion is four weeks later, you get a big brown envelope, um, you go to the solicitor office to drop off. Things have changed drastically today. It's it's it's gonna be all online, and it's quite clever, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 14:42

The and it's kind of set the scene for your career there in terms of you'd researched beforehand in terms of bidding practice because that's key. Most people would have gone up in increments of 210, 25, but psychologically I find it really interesting. It 200, 200, because other people there will suddenly think, oh, right, because you might get someone that puts up an extra thousand pounds, but suddenly you're in control and you've almost wrestled control from the uh auctioneer, and it's quite quite a clever way of you know, I'd not thought of that before in terms of how to interject that.

SPEAKER_00 15:18

But that was that but I I think more importantly, what happened afterwards was that we had no limited company, we had no bank account, we had no experience in taking a mortgage, and we have just exchanged on a property with completion of four weeks, £21,000,210,000. Now, to make things worse, we came back to the office to Chaim's father-in-law, and he turns to us and he says, You bought the property? We said, Yes. He said, For how much? The check wasn't even covered. Not because it wasn't covered, there was no money in that particular account because he gave us a check thinking nothing's gonna happen. So again, money has to get injected. They've got three days for the cash for the for the cat for the check to cash. There's not like today we have to give a 10,000 pound deposit for a billion. But looking at that whole journey, right? It's about going out of your comfort zone, jumping in first, and then fixing it in the background. And we did complete on time and we did develop that property, and we sold it.

SPEAKER_01 16:09

And in terms of the the development, because one of the you know, we spoke off camera, and I've always I've always spoke to you over the years on this. When you're in that property sector, I'm assuming there was things needed to be done to the property, so you're kind of sourcing contractors and trusted tradespeople to to and enact things, and and one of the things I've I wanted the key thing I think I wanted a few things with you to be fair, but one of the key things is if you look at Prime Connect and all the businesses you operate, you are very different to a lot of the resellers you'll see at industry events and I see where as they scale and grow, they automatically think we need to hire more people and not um either utilize technology or use trusted contractors, whereas your business is one that could hire a number of people, but purposefully you've kind of utilized your network to offer the same service that a business with you know significant people would do. Is that where the seeds are kind of planted in that property side? Because you're working with different contractors, you could because some people in property development and you'll have seen it, could could they form their own company and they have 20 tradespeople that work for them and they do this, this, this, and suddenly it becomes a honest, I didn't think about it this way.

SPEAKER_00 17:33

It's a good way of framing it, but I think the number one problem or the number one pain point in most businesses is the people, HR, and everything that goes around it. So that's something I try to avoid. And I prefer to outsource, let go of the steering wheel, and take the professional people in every industry. So, yes, we can probably afford a marketing person full-time. I rather take two or three agencies and and pay them and be able to move very quickly if I'm not happy. And the same thing with cabling, the same thing with anything that we need in the business. Um we prefer to keep the business very, very lean and let the people who are professional in that field run the bits that we don't know. I'm a sales guy. That's all I that's that that's that's how I always um look to myself, sales and marketing. And if I can just make the point, if you look at a business, there's three parts to every business sales and marketing, operations, finance. Now no business can work without all three being there. You can have a very good sales team and a very good operations team. If the finance team doesn't work, you have no business. Same thing if you've got good operations, good finance, but no sales team, they have no work. And if you have good finance and good sales without operations, everything falls apart. Now, from these three, what would you say is the most important?

SPEAKER_01 19:06

See, I I personally it's a really good question. So you I don't think you can pick something that is is more important than the other personally, because I think a great operations function can enable the sales function by virtue of the product that the salespeople are selling. So, particularly in the channel, um there'll be suppliers I use, you use, where you go, the quality of service is excellent. The salesperson doesn't really need to do a a job, if you like, because the product stands there. Conversely, if there is a business that, you know, in a competitive industry that isn't front foot, in order to grow in in the industry, and and we'll touch on it, market conditions, you need to be acquiring customers to almost stand still, such as the the sort of change that we're seeing. So you need that bit, but then ultimately on the finance bit, and we just had um I was speaking to Will Murray, the um Gamma MD, he ran a business, and the first business he had failed because it was growing, and they didn't keep a control on the cash. So they you know, acquiring customers that they couldn't afford to service ultimately, so it scaled too fast and ran out of cash effectively. So they've all kind of linked. I mean, what would if if I put that question to you, what do you think?

SPEAKER_00 20:30

Um personally, I think sales and marketing is the most important. And the reason why I say that, all three are important 100%. Your point is every single if not, they wouldn't be around. If they're not important, no business would need all three elements. But the only thing that's outbound in a business are two things the CEO and the MD, who's doing the vision, and the sales team. They're all outbound. All the rest, whether it's hiring people, is a result of having a lot of sales, whether it's shipping, whether it's what whatever's needed in a business, right? The finance, even the invoices, the collecting, the direct debits, it's all inbound. The only thing that's outbound, which actually is the hardest thing to do. Most people I speak to, if you ask them what's your biggest pain point in the business, growth and and sales and marketing, right? That that's gonna be the the the most difficult one to do. You're 100% right in saying finance is important, and you know, we we keep very good track on the financials, and I always say what's not measured is not managed, and and this applies everywhere, but definitely in the financials. Um, so it it is true though.

SPEAKER_01 21:33

I think if um it's a the I kind of use an analogy with with sales of um it's kind of hunting. So you if you were um you know marooned on a on a on a desert island, if you're able to catch your own food, um, i.e. if a salesperson is able to to find an opportunity and and secure it, that adds a a value and it's kind of lacking a lot in the industry and My opinion in terms of good good sales behaviours, but it is um it's essential to be to be out there and acquiring customers or speaking to customers and getting that feedback. Good salesperson. I know you go to a lot of industry events and other people where you'll get feedback from competitors, what they're doing, the way they're looking at the market. Can I bring that back into my business? I like that, I don't like that, and and it kind of helps you mould that to you know, because it was I mean you've got two or three other businesses now that you've kind of moved into, and I'm assuming that's on the back of being a salesperson, listening, and being out there in the market. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:38

100%. Um, I think if what you're referring to is being very verticalized and going in after niche, that's something we started doing. I would say not early on the business, probably not too late, probably around 2021. We initially started with the multi-taneted buildings, as you know.

SPEAKER_01 22:57

So you did your first property within 31 days, and obviously the checks and you're kind of sorting that. Why didn't you just stay and um into the property sector and have properties? You know, you do some up, you sell them, others you're renting out, and you probably see it with you probably know loads of people that are in that sort of is it the HMO space, and you see like YouTube videos of the experts, property, and and there's some characters that are giving advice. I mean, I'll give you a true story. My I think my brother-in-law and sister-in-law, I think they paid about 10-15 grand for a course on property, sort of, you know, buy a fixer up or do it up, take the money out of that property, go into the next. And I don't know why you would do that, but it's become such a big thing. What what what point did that property side where you kind of moved into tech?

SPEAKER_00 23:54

I never moved into tech, I fell into tech. Um so we bought we we bought our first property in September, we then bought a second property in February, which I think we I think I know we still own. Um, but it was getting boring. And when I say boring, my day looked like this. We left the office, we didn't have an office, we left our houses at 11 o'clock, drove to the first property, which was in Chingford, because there was the regeneration going on for the 2012 Olympics, the North Circular was very, very slow to move every day, so that gave us an extra half an hour of doing nothing. Um we went to visit the first property, we then went to East London to the second property. Um and we were home at four o'clock. And doing this day in, day out, and really micromanaging the builders on each site wasn't a very good use of our time. It wasn't even how much money you can make out of it, it was just it wasn't keeping me satisfied.

SPEAKER_01 24:48

Imagine intellectually, it's quite you not being challenged. It's quite same thing again. So that that that I don't know I don't know if you know if you consider yourself an entrepreneur, but that entrepreneurial bit, that the ideas of we can do this, that it's quite stifling, I imagine, because you're it's like eat, sleep, go to bed, no, I need the same thing again.

SPEAKER_00 25:09

I need some meat on the boat. Yeah, yeah. Um and then this is what happens, you know. So we were looking at franchise models, um, and we bumped into a franchise. I don't know if you heard done, Telco in a box, Australian company, Damien Gold, Daniel Crespi, Jim Joyce was an account manager there. So um they went Farringdon, they had this advertised, Heim said it's gonna have a look, had a look, signed the contract, and uh that's it. How long did it take you to sign that contract? Three days. We're very quick decision makers. Yeah. Um that was probably if you'd asked me what my most like pivotal moment was was making that change of taking off my property hat, which let's not kid ourselves, is prestigious. You know, you're buying, you're selling, you're financing, going to the solicitor, you you it's it's it's the buzzwords, right? Um going into a telecom reseller. Uh people in the community thought I'm absolutely nuts. What are you selling telecom for? How can you make money out of it? Um it just didn't make sense. And you know, I said I'm gonna do it, and one year, two years, and as my account manager Jim Joyce always said, pile it on, pile it on, pile it on, and it's it's crazy what happens afterwards, right? Because you've got the customers from year one, year two, year three, and then suddenly you've got a big business.

SPEAKER_01 26:31

It's interesting again because uh you kind of look at it and you go, right, 14, I'm gonna go to America, it's the right thing to do. Well, you shouldn't do that. You go. Uh go and look at a property. Here's a blank check, you won't write it, buy a house. Then going into uh a different industry, the community say, Why are you looking at this this reseller bit? Property is solid, it's bricks and mortar, it's worth you know, cash. No, I'm doing this. This is the right right course of action. It's it's quite interesting. Uh that that strength of character to know this is what you want to do. And obviously, the telcoina box, you're adding, I guess, more and more customers. Your sales bit, if we like sales and marketing, you're able to acquire those customers. Um, and were you did you have your own office? Was that the inception, if you like, of private connect?

SPEAKER_00 27:21

Just to dial back to that, I'm saying the the the one good decision that we did, because obviously there's plenty of opportunity. How to become a reseller, the telco box model was different that we were able to keep the customer, and their pitch to us was you do the sales, we will do the back office, the provisioning, the support, and the billing and the direct debit collection. So from very early on, we were focused, hi and myself, only on sales.

SPEAKER_01 27:44

The back office that kind of dealer model, isn't it? That you've seen channel where I guess there's a the customer. Customer sits with you, but if you like the the financial liability, if you want to have a better description, would sit with the the supplier. No, it wouldn't. Would that sit with you?

SPEAKER_00 28:00

Yeah, we were always very, very, very conscious about making sure everyone's in direct debit. And I was thinking something we were taught. You know, Telkin a box definitely put us on the right track um at the time. We had no education in this space at all. They spent time with us and so on. But going back to your question, um, did we get an office? So we started in the loft of my father-in-law. We then rented an office in Staples Corner, that's off the M1. Um, I don't think it was 100 square foot, definitely didn't have any windows. Um, two desks, chair, and here's the funny bit one phone that was connected to an ISDM30 that we were using, making outbound calls with a phone number from the from from the service office, and then people calling back coming to Millennium Business Center. So that's how um how we started. So yeah, we we we it was it was crazy.

SPEAKER_01 28:56

And it's interesting with the with the the telco and reboard, but it's gave giving you that framework and the and and and and it's interesting. The clever because I clicked where you said in terms of the way they collected direct debits, because normally the the dealer models kind of you're not involved, they'll you get a commission, and but this is quite a clever way. And one of the things I I remember you saying, I think publicly on on LinkedIn, is with suppliers, and you've kind of I guess it's a something you learnt from the property side where people were contractors working for you, always pay them on time, pay them full. That is a a priority equally almost, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:34

100% hundred percent. It's it's non-negotiable. It gets me really upset when I hear friends of mine who are owed money by people. And and I I I learned this lesson very early on because we subcontracted to a guy called Mike, and he did cabling in an office. I think the job was around three thousand pounds, and he sent an invoice the day he finished the job. And I asked him, Is it okay to wait until we get paid by our customer? And he said, Absolutely not, I'm not your bank. And that was like a moment for me, like, he's a hundred percent right, I have to pay him, and he doesn't have to cash flow my business, and that's things that we've put in place very strong on both ends, non-negotiable.

SPEAKER_01 30:18

Yeah, I think it's it's uh it's a hot topic, I think, in terms of where resellers can struggle, and and where a big customer almost will take over the um they'll account for a high percentage of the revenue and they'll almost hold the reseller to um almost blackmail with payments and things, and you can be too flexible, whereas it's very reasonable, I think, to say I've done a service for you, you should pay me, and I you can't delay a payment to a supplier because you've not received money.

SPEAKER_00 30:56

Um I I I I think one has to do with the other. Yeah, yeah. If someone's easygoing, gotta be strong on both. If if a person is not so strict with his customers, putting them on direct debit and chasing them on day 30, then he won't be incentivized to pay his suppliers either. And someone who is strict understands how hard it's to get the money, he'll just pass on any cash he has straight away. So the supplier, and and the relationship with the supplier, let's face it, is probably more important sometimes than the relationship with the customer. The customer is one customer out of a thousand, supplier, you probably got a dozen dozen suppliers, right? So you need to be in good shape with them before getting them upset.

SPEAKER_01 31:30

And that's and as I say, with from you to have the business model you have, it's essential that that there's there's almost that sits in the core of it. Where I imagine when you're expanding Prime and you're going to different locations, because of the relationship you got with a number of contractors, they're all really keen to work for you. And if someone says if you approach someone different, they might know someone who works with you in a different area. Everybody knows everyone sometimes in our industry, they can do a quick check, and suddenly there'll be businesses we both know probably that are not great at that, and they might want a contractor, and that contractor will say no thank you, or I will do it, but you pay me up front, or whatever that may be. What sort of influence have you had that you've not wanted to have the big office with 10 salespeople, 10 marketing, finance, operations, your own team? Have you always why are you deliberately because you could support it? And I think this is the really interesting thing because I don't know another business that is as large as yours that has gone down the particular route. There's businesses probably we both know that are smaller, significantly smaller than Prime, that will have 10, 15, 20 people working for them because I think they maybe feel that as you grow you hire more people. Where's that kind of come from? Not sure.

SPEAKER_00 32:54

I think it's about really not wanting to manage other people. That that's really I think where it came from. And the people that we do have in the business are so good that they can take on a lot of work. So I rather hire one superstar than hire two, three B and C players. So that's really but I'm not saying that we won't grow in head count, right? We we are growing, but not to the head count that's expected of the size of company that we are 100%.

SPEAKER_01 33:21

And I think that's why you know a lot of businesses watching this will be really interested because I think normally the sales bit, like one of the things I always joke about in the industry in most sales businesses, or most businesses, they kind of say, We are we are uh acquiring 20 new customers a month with two salespeople. So if I hire three salespeople, I will be acquiring 50 customers, and and we see big businesses that adopt that approach, and it's quite it's really clever how you've kind of looked at it and gone, I want to be different.

SPEAKER_00 33:55

And and it's quite so on on the sales side, right? I'm very into creating inbound leads, right? Whether the social media, the PR, however you have to create it, I think we're very good at it. And so that's on the on the sales side. I'm not saying that appointment setters won't do a good job, and I'm not saying hiring more people won't potentially bring in more customers, but one thing I've learned over the years, it's the same way you acquire them, is the same way you lose them. If the guy comes to a news shot, then an email shot, he will leave for the next email shot 36 months later after his contract. We've seen it because we've tried it. If you have an appointment setter, that company will probably leave for the next appointment setter. However, if the reason why he's coming to you is because he's been interacting with you on social media, he's read your articles, he values your expertise, it's a whole different ballgame and money falls out of the playboard.

SPEAKER_01 34:50

The relationship bit is strong, isn't it? Because I think it provides I think if there's a challenge, if the relationships is there, it can be overcome. And we see it in channel, and I bet you see it with suppliers. I always say in channel, if there's you only really understand a partnership when things go wrong, be it the supplier to the reseller or the reseller to the customer, that's when you you know what the metal is. Um and obviously the generating inbound leads is probably the number one difficulty in in the in sales is generating people wanting to be because it's not instantaneous, you haven't you know spoke to the market. I I think within a month, it's not coming in.

SPEAKER_00 35:32

That's where the next part comes in that we go very, very, very niche and very vertical. So we rather have 80% from a very, very small market than try to attack everything. So going back to 2022, and I was trying to make that point earlier about the multi-tenanted sites, um we were, and you mentioned shotgun, and so um, you know, a shotgun will shoot anywhere, but sniper is very correct in exactly where he shoots, and and you know the analogy a lot of times um comes back to me. Why take on the estate agent and the solicitor and the accountant and and everyone else? It's you're just all over the place. And if you focus on care homes, you focus on multi-tenant sites, and more recently we're doing you know, sim cards and lift, sims and lifts and landlords connect now, um, these are going to be easier things to pursue and going straight after markets and becoming the market leader with expertise that is needed for that.

SPEAKER_01 36:27

Um so it's is you must see the challenge though in the sector you're in with technology. You could and the businesses do do this where they'll go to a channel live or they'll go to different events and then they'll come back and say, right, we did um connectivity in multi-tenant buildings, and we did a little bit of voice. Now we're gonna do security, we're gonna do the Wi-Fi, and also there's some AI software I saw on vendor six, and we're gonna do all these different products because I can put um a GP element on each of them, and it's gonna make my customer sticky, and this is what we do. It's quite um it's a bit of a trap sometimes the the amount of technology out there to move into areas that you're maybe not aware of, whereas you've kind of gone, we know what we do, we do it brilliantly. I'm not gonna be adding different products all the time.

SPEAKER_00 37:26

Do you find that difficult sometimes with your I think that goes back to the beginning what we spoke about? Um, if you look at all the areas we operate, they're all gonna have some type of flavor and property, whether multi-tenanted sites, and and you know, that was, I guess, the reason why we went into multi-tenant sites was because I wasn't feeling excited about selling telecoms anymore. To sell 10 seats, 20 seats, connectivity, it didn't excite me. However, if you're doing multi-tenanted sites, suddenly you are in central Birmingham, central, wherever it is, central Leeds, going to Glasgow, um, going into these, you know, one of these one of the buildings you've got 300,000 square foot. All right, the other one is probably 500,000 square foot. So suddenly things are bigger, you're talking to, I guess, different size of companies, um, and that re-reinstated that uh entrepreneurial drive because I would say that the problem we were struggling with at 2022 was it was it was it was too too flat, it was plateauing. Um, so focusing on these verticals definitely gave us you know the continuation that we have now and the growth.

SPEAKER_01 38:29

I suppose it's interesting well, because you you're getting you're kind of hitting the mark on a few things there, you're dealing with some really interesting uh building owners because I know um when I spoke to Haim, your business partner, he would speak to various property owners within uh the temple and talk about what Prime can do and how they can support them. So you're speaking to you know, high net worth, really interesting people there, kind of you're doing them the multi-tenant solution, but then sitting behind that, you're also speaking to businesses as well and their growth and and building relationships with them. So it's kind of, I guess, for you hitting a few interesting marks rather than just the landlords or just the businesses, you're kind of able to bring passion into a I think we've got we've got a large menu, but um all in property-related verticals, I guess. But it's because like I say, you and it's kind of answering the question I asked before where you could have just stayed in in the property sector, but it's kind of a logical step. It's kind of it starts from I'm finding this a little bit boring if I'm honest, to moving into that, to then actually going, I see there's a niche here, let's be the expert in that, but then it's scaling a business and going actually I don't need to hire hundreds of people, I can do it in a in a smarter way. Uh same with bidding on a property and going, it's I don't need to go up in increments of ten, I can go in increments of one. It's quite it's quite it's really uh it's really fascinating. So have you have you in uh your business partner home have you ever ever crossed words, ever, ever disagreed on anything, or are you always pretty aligned?

SPEAKER_00 40:04

I think we're very aligned. We wouldn't be here 15 years later not being aligned.

SPEAKER_01 40:09

Such an important relationship, though, isn't it, with your business partner? I think it's very clear, very clear about it. It's like family, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 40:15

We always have this rule in the office, there's no two people on one seat, right? So it's very defined where Chaim sits and very defined where I sit, and very defined where the other guys in the office, there's no overlap. Um you know, just I think one thing I've put in place very early, and some people call me Mr. Excel guy because I'm so boxed up, you know, I've got everything in a separate box and quite organized, is boundaries. Um when I say boundaries, if you can just you know, if you go to New York, you go on a hundred-story apartment block, and you go up to the top roof, and you're walking there, and there's no fence. So you'll go, I think, two meters away from the fence, but two meters before the fence, you're gonna stop. Someone who's got a bit more guts will go one metre, but that's it. If there's a fence there, you can go all the way to the end and you can even bend over. Now putting boundaries in place, right, allow you to really operate within the space that you've placed that boundary. And I've learned every no is a yes to something else, and every yes is a no to something else. And I think that goes back to how are we able to operate with a lean team.

SPEAKER_01 41:20

It's because knowing to say no when it's time to say no, and if I may say get rid of the customer when it's time to get rid of him, and I've done that in the past very occasionally, but sometimes we just turn around and say, I don't think it's working, yeah, because it it it's it's knowing your customer, and I think a lot of resellers can be it's difficult because you want to acquire customers to grow your revenue, to grow your profit, to pay yourself or put value in that business, but you can be filling with uh your business with customers that don't fit in with the direction you want to go in.

SPEAKER_00 41:57

You kind of just drain us, they drain you, they drain you. And we've got we've got something very interesting in the in the office. I think I posted about this on LinkedIn once. It's called the happy customer pot, right? So we'll put in a certain percentage in the happy customer pot, and anything that comes our way. So in the olden days, very common missed appointment from Open Reach, weather installation, weather there was a missed appointment, and then there's a 150-pound bill, and the customer says I was there and I wasn't there, and we've taken the position that comes from the happy customer pot, and we don't even discuss it. Now that's called freeing up time because what's going to happen is negotiation, you meet him halfway, he probably goes away a little bit disgruntled, he's not happy, he's gonna remember it, and we just say we have this pot, call it a marketing pot, right? Keep the customer happy pot, and we don't go into that negotiation, router breaks, all these type of things, and I'm always looking for places where we can optimize and take away certain steps.

SPEAKER_01 42:54

How do you educate a customer that you've done that? Is it because I think it's amazing on those things, and I think knowing the industry well, particularly on the open reach example, you could be in a position where you're arguing with the supplier, the supplier's arguing with someone else, and that's going on for ages, and ultimately your customer does not care about the 14 people arguing in the chain. I have this issue now, and I'm blaming you because I pay you. So, you fixing that, all this can still go on. It just might mean that the the happy customer part gets replenished in six months when you know cash gets returned. How do you do you say to a customer, listen, it's gonna take ages, we want you to be so we're gonna cover that ourselves, or does it just happen automatically? I personally I would be we're doing this and it's a big thing for us, and because of the relationship, you definitely managing customers' expectations, I think, is key.

SPEAKER_00 43:49

So saying that we're gonna get that lease line in twelve days is just not good. Not good for you, not good for the customer, not good for the supplier, right? So you need to always anchor it. This is a sixty to nine. The installation and then maybe show your wins.

SPEAKER_01 44:04

Does it uh weigh heavier on you or has it previously because you do lots of business in um your community and you know a lot of your customers on a personal level, when there's a if there's an issue with things, be it out of your control that impacts people, does it weigh on you differently? Because I I was having this con the reason for the question is I was having a conversation with someone, I think I was talking to the uh a director somewhere else in channel, and when you build a relationship with someone and their service is impacted for whatever reason, you take it to heart a little bit and it can affect sleep and all these different things. How how do you manage that side of things? Because unfortunately, in our industry and what use how occasionally things can can go wrong.

SPEAKER_00 44:54

It's a challenge, it's definitely been a challenge, and I think the challenge has been that you start operating in 2010, 11, 12, and you go you know to the friendly customers, and then you suddenly grow, but they don't know you've grown. So they're expecting a WhatsApp message and they're expecting a phone call and a text message. So that's been a challenge on the WhatsApp side. For the listeners, that could be a very good tip because I implement it on two occasions and it's it's been a game changer. If I get a WhatsApp message, I will forward that WhatsApp message to the support email and copy in the customer. Right, so now what's happened is I've moved away the conversation from WhatsApp. And vice versa, if you want to send someone a a voice note, record the voice note and just attach it to an email. Because that backwards and forwards on the case.

SPEAKER_01 45:43

Because there's nothing worse is there is a business that's growing.

SPEAKER_00 45:47

I think that that goes back why we really don't operate in B2C, because I like working from nine to five, right? When everyone else works. Imagine Will comes home at night and the Wi-Fi is not working. When is Will going to call up Prime Connect at 5 o'clock, 6 o'clock, Sundays? And so early on, right, getting rid of that and saying no to that. And it's very difficult sometimes because you've got you know large businesses say, Come on, Chaim, just take the residential as well. And the residential can eventually lose you the whole contract. So you have to be very strict and I guess very clever to know when to say no, and that goes back to the boundaries.

SPEAKER_01 46:25

No, it makes sense, and I think um it's one of those challenges all businesses have when they grow. There's nothing worse than those first customers who ultimately took a chance on you and invested uh their trust in you that them come turn around five, ten years and say, You've changed, you've grown too big, uh da da da. But and I suppose there's a there's a bit of ownership on either side. The customer must understand that previously you might have been able to pop round and have a cup of tea and a chat and da-da-da, and the world's changed a little bit, but then at the same time, you still want them to feel valued, so using technology to kind of move them into a way that you can still support in a great way, but not them feeling like they're no longer important and they've been reseting.

SPEAKER_00 47:14

Just on that point, um, that's a good example of how we try to fix this problem. We have a large care home group. It started becoming that my number was going around to the admin, to the nurse, to the receptionist, and I'm getting these random phone calls when I'm sitting in a meeting with an unknown number. Um, so my wife told them is as follows Um there was once in in Jerusalem there's a very big building, quite prominent. Um it belongs to the dynasty of someone called Bells. And the story goes, he finished up the building, and all the other rabbis came to congratulate him. And the rabbi from Bells said to his assistant, take the rabbi from Goa around, and the rabbi from Goa responded uh responded to his assistant, go with. Right now, what's happening here is they're both saying the assistant should talk to the assistant. And what I try to explain to people is you know, you've got a very big business to run. Why don't you let your admin and your receptionist and whoever it is call our support desk? And by all means, if there's no resolution, I'll be the point of the channel.

SPEAKER_01 48:15

And they'll have a better experience because they're speaking to someone who can impact stuff straight away. You could be out and about in different meetings, you're not gonna get around potentially to answer the message straight away. Um conscious of time. Just just to finish on on kind of a bit of a relay in terms of my head, our conversation. So, young boy, Antwerp, entrepreneurs, hardworking people, all around you. I want to go to America. I've got this image of you at 14 with a suitcase full of uh US dollars, uh, jumping on to jumping on multiple plates, each stop. Listen, mum, I'm alright, I've still got the money, everything's okay. Living there for a number of years, loving it, kind of adding uh a chunk of skills within that, coming back, um spending time in Israel, meeting your wife, going to London, back to Israel, back to London, the property side, blank check, incremental bidding, which I think you've always as little as that sounds, it kind of sums you up where you've researched something in advance, you've been different to the majority of people, and you've just gone for it, and then as that build build industry, business, however you want to call it, it's got a little bit boring, you've pivoted, and you've kind of always had that bit within there, but while while building those relationships in the industry, so I think there's there's a lot that adds a huge amount of value for a lot of businesses that are starting out because I think most, and you see it all the time, I do when they grow, they'll hire more people, they'll spend fortunes on on marketing, they won't build relationships with customers or they're not sure what their market is. They're kind of throwing a fishing net and getting what they get. Whereas you've always been quite or or sorry, not always, but at the start maybe not so. But now very simple.

SPEAKER_00 50:15

I guess we're called there's the ABS syndrome, anything but sales, they'll open up the posh office with the website and the business card and and everything else. It will never ever pick up a phone and and call someone. I think that's something that we had to learn as well.

SPEAKER_01 50:31

See the ABC can be um well, always be calling. Always calling them. But thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate you coming in, it means a lot, and hopefully you've uh you've enjoyed it. I think there's a lot of value um from a business perspective, and I know sort of the work you do with with Javatees, but other business owners and things like that. I know people probably see you at um channel live events and industry events. I'm sure they'll be able to to nick five minutes of your time for some uh some insight in terms of um running a successful business or or property. Um so thank you so much, sir.

SPEAKER_00 51:07

Thank you very much. Well, it's been a pleasure, and thank you for not making me um go all the way up to yeah, thank you.

SPEAKER_01 51:15

There's life outside of London, I tell you that. Thank you so much, sir. Thank you. I feel very fortunate in this in this role that I have where I'm able to speak to business owners. It's almost like being able having a life jacket and to kind of swim in the ocean of an entrepreneur where I can listen to what they've done with their career and the risks they've taken and how they've grown and and how's no different, growing a business, uh ambassador for his community, but also kind of doing it in a really, really clever way. And I think the key things for me are in terms of utilising contract and resource experts in their field, paying them on time, obviously. It's key. Knowing the market you want to look at, but at the same time, and customer, knowing where you want to go and seeing if there's a gap in that market and to move into that very deliberately, very um agile. So thank you so much. Um cheers for my mum who watches every week. It's appreciated. I don't think she does to be fair, but I'll always mention it. Um real look forward to it. Thanks for your time, and obviously, any questions, anything business, you'll probably see well, you will see it me, industry advance, and you'll see see Haim now as well. So thank you all. Take care, bye bye. If you like what we're doing with Chewing the Channel, you like talking to industry leaders, you like talking to people who actually are involved in the channel, who actually have opinions that are their own, and who actually are employing people and growing businesses. I encourage you, please like and subscribe so we can keep getting amazing guests talking through their journey, talking through their careers, and talking through their views on the uh the industry. So please, all your support is needed and very much appreciated.